The community-maintained Arch wiki is an excellent resource and should be consulted for issues first. The IRC channel (irc://irc.freenode.net/#archlinux), and the forums are also available if the answer cannot be found elsewhere. Also, be sure to check out the man pages for any command you are unfamiliar with; this can usually be invoked with man command.

Preparation

Note: If you wish to install from an existing GNU/Linux distribution, please see this article. This can be useful particularly if you plan to install Arch via VNC or SSH remotely.

Burn or write the latest installation medium

This guide pertains to the current release (2013.02.01), which can be obtained from the Download page. Note that a single ISO image supports both 32 and 64-bit architectures.

Burn the ISO image on a CD or DVD with your preferred software.

Note: The quality of optical drives and the discs themselves varies greatly. Generally, using a slow burn speed is recommended for reliable burns. If you are experiencing unexpected behaviour from the disc, try burning at the lowest speed supported by your burner.

Installing over the network

Instead of writing the boot media to a disc or USB stick, you may alternatively boot the .iso image over the network. This works well when you already have a server set up. Please see this article for more information, and then continue to Boot the installation medium.

Installing on a virtual machine

Installing on a virtual machine is a good way to become familiar with Arch Linux and its installation procedure without leaving your current operating system and repartitioning the storage drive. It will also let you keep this Beginners' Guide open in your browser throughout the installation. Some users may find it beneficial to have an independent Arch Linux system on a virtual drive, for testing purposes.

Note: Users seeking to perform the Arch Linux installation remotely via an SSH connection are encouraged to make a few tweaks at this point to enable SSH connections directly to the live CD environment. If interested, see the Install from SSH article.

Once you have booted into the live environment, your shell is Zsh; this will provide you advanced Tab completion, and other features as part of the grml config.

Testing if you are booted into UEFI mode

In case you have a UEFI motherboard and UEFI Boot mode is enabled (and is preferred over BIOS/Legacy mode), the CD/USB will automatically launch Arch Linux kernel (EFISTUB via Gummiboot Boot Manager). To check whether you have booted into UEFI mode, load the efivars kernel module (before chrooting) and then check whether there are files in /sys/firmware/efi/vars/:

# modprobe efivars # before chrooting
# ls -1 /sys/firmware/efi/vars/

Note: The kernel module efivars detects and populates the UEFI Runtime Variables at /sys/firmware/efi/vars. This module is not loaded automatically during the boot process, and until this module is loaded, and the kernel booted in UEFI mode, withoutnoefi parameter, no files will exist in /sys/firmware/efi/vars. These variables are later modified by efibootmgr to add bootloader entry to UEFI boot menu. In BIOS mode, modprobe will not give any error about efivars module. The correct way to detect UEFI boot is to check for files in /sys/firmware/efi/vars .

Troubleshooting boot problems

If you're using an Intel video chipset and the screen goes blank during the boot process, the problem is likely an issue with Kernel Mode Setting (KMS). A possible workaround may be achieved by rebooting and pressing Template:Keypress over the entry that you're trying to boot (i686 or x86_64). At the end of the string type nomodeset and press Template:Keypress. Alternatively, try video=SVIDEO-1:d which, if it works, will not disable kernel mode setting. See the Intel article for more information.

If the screen does not go blank and the boot process gets stuck while trying to load the kernel, press Template:Keypress while hovering over the menu entry, type acpi=off at the end of the string and press Template:Keypress.